


All These Scattered Souls

by hachidorikun, MonoclePony



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Con Artists, Exorcisms, Ghost Hunter AU, Horror, Humour, M/M, Paranormal Investigators, Polyamory, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Wicca, sarky ghost!Jean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:03:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4228143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hachidorikun/pseuds/hachidorikun, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonoclePony/pseuds/MonoclePony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"This isn’t a ghost story.<br/>Okay, fuck, maybe it is, but it wasn’t meant to be..."</i>
</p>
<p>After a chance encounter with the paranormal when he was 10 years old, Eren Jaeger was thrown into a world of fear and horror- if he’d ever believed in the stuff. He instead realised, in spite of his experience being unexplainable, that he had a definite gift for the con. Joining forces with his childhood friend, one Armin Arlert, Eren builds up a reputation as a paranormal investigator of the highest order; but every single one of his ‘investigations’ are faked. The money is easy, people are gullible and Eren gets off on the thrill. </p>
<p>But then they find an ACTUAL ghost. </p>
<p>A ghost that writes notes to anyone who'll listen warning them to 'Get out while you can'.</p>
<p>That is when Eren and Armin realise, with the help of a disenchanted Empath, that ghosts can be haunted too.</p>
<p>And all of the bullshit becomes very, very real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All These Scattered Souls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hachidorikun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hachidorikun/gifts).



> THIS IS THE OTHER THING I WAS WORKING ON GUYS;;;;;
> 
> Ghosthunter AU is a go! Well, not exactly, this is more of a sample- I won't be working on it PROPERLY until after SFS is finished, but this is what you're in for!  
> This is a birthday gift to hachidorikun who is the sweetest lil sweetheart sprout ever who needs all the love pushed their way :D They've helped this AU grow from a little chuckling tweet to a fully fledged heart-wrenching monster and I can't be happier about that: so, y'know, you can also go screaming to /them/ too. We enable each other. It's a crime. 
> 
> But anyway, I hope you enjoy this sample chapter (it'll probably get pulled off and edited once I actually start work on this post SFS) and let me know if it's your sorta thing :D I'm super excited for it, and I want you guys to be too! 
> 
> My tumblr, as always, is here: attackonmyponderland.tumblr.com

This isn’t a ghost story.

Okay, fuck, maybe it is, but it wasn’t meant to be. I guess that was the problem, back then when we were messing with things we had no idea about. We didn’t have a clue how it would rock our worlds. Before we met Jean (I say the word ‘met’ like we went and shook his hand. I still haven’t shaken his hand, the cute little prick) and before Marco, we didn’t care about the occult. Couldn’t give less of a shit- or maybe I’m generalising. _I_ couldn’t give less of a shit about the occult. Ironic, really, considering I still rode on the wispy, ethereal coattails of an event that involved exactly that. Ain’t that a kick in the head.

I guess I should start at the beginning. Eren Jaeger, a then arrogant fuck of a twenty-something, and I hunted ghosts. Yeah, that’s where the irony came in.

I started off on my own, a cocky seventeen year old who thought the world was his oyster and everyone was trying to pinch the pearl. This life was something that followed me around like my own personal ghost, skipping from continent to continent and appearing wherever I ran, until I was convinced I was well and truly a part of it. It was all thanks to the Carla Incident. I was considered as having an ‘experience’ from anyone who heard this goddamn story, so it wasn’t hard to convince the populous of my hometown that I had some kind of ‘gift’ for sniffing out the unexplained and extraordinary. I was eleven when I performed my first ‘exorcism’ and thirteen when I first caught a ghost on camera. Pretty good going for a young kid.

Unbeknownst to everyone, I actually just mumbled the words to ‘we all live in a yellow submarine’ in a mix of Turkish, Hungarian and Latin for the so-called ‘exorcism’ and was surprised when the townspeople gave me a roll of cash and a pat on the back for a job well done.

Huh. Little me realised that this was definitely something good I had going.

The word ‘con man’ is thrown around so lightly nowadays, but I pretty much walked into the job at eleven. Maybe I’ve always loved messing people around. The locals knew me as that kid from the Carla Incident, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be letting them down.

The kid from the Carla Incident, however, probably wouldn’t have been looked on so fondly once they realised he was using the remains of their gratitude money to cheat at poker a decade later. Call it the demon in me.

I was in the middle of a game, wondering how I could fix it this time without the same suckers figuring out, in some backwater town down South. The South was always the best for pickings; not only were the locals more superstitious than my Grandma on a bad day, they were frugal with their money. I didn’t necessarily get paid for ‘proving’ a ghost’s presence in a building (though it was surprising how often people _did_ shell out) so that was where the card games came in. Gotta make the bed money somehow. I let my attention wander from the fumbling dealer to the corner of the musty little bar we’d found, and grinned as my eyes met bright blue ones.

They narrowed ever so slightly, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was going to get a rollicking once the game was over, and all I could do was grin toothily in response. _Is that a promise?_ The blue eyes rolled. Mine, I was sure, glinted in the way they always did.

Armin Arlert. Both my doom and my resurrection. 

He was sat in said farthest corner like he was making a point of not associating with me, and had his arms tightly folded as he nursed the lukewarm beer at his elbow. Armin wasn’t the drinking kind, but often my efforts drew him to the habit. Whoops. The heavy humidity had led him to pull his hair up into a kind of feeble blonde ponytail that sat sadly atop his head, yet he stubbornly refused to wear anything shorter than his pale long sleeve rolled to the elbow. He would live and die in that shirt, I thought to myself, and saw him scoff like he’d heard me. He had the company of a bird-like daughter of the reverend who didn’t seem to want to stop talking, and he was trying his best to look interested. A small blue rune poked out from underneath the material, and I pursed my lips. He really _was_ feeling brave.

Unlike me, Armin actually believed in ghosts. He believed in a hell of a lot more, too, but he tended to keep that to himself. Daughters of reverends would not appreciate where his loyalties lay, especially not ones who looked like they wanted to do rather unholy things to him.

Alas, he was mine to taint.

He raised his brow at my scrunity, and let a long-suffering smile cross his face. Angry he could be, but holding grudges for longer than a few hours was not his forte. Even before we were partners in everything but name, he forgave too easily. I like to think it’s due to my animal attraction, but Armin says I look like I’m about to fucking cry every time he gets pissed at me. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

He stared pointedly at the card game, as if to tell me that if I had to con these poor innocents out of their money I could at least pretend I was enjoying it, and I turned back to it. _No rest for the wicked_.

“Who did you say you were?” someone asked as we peeked at our cards. “Just passing through?”

I shrugged. I decided to pick the easier question to answer that wouldn’t cause a bar fight. “Depends if there’s anything here that interests me.”

“What do you do?” Another asked.

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “Things that give grown men nightmares.” I heard Armin snort from the other end of the bar. _Shut the fuck up, Armin. I need to stay in character._

The first man, a guy who would’ve been more at home down a dank, dirty hole somewhere, persisted, “I heard you was a demon-hunter.”

I smirked. “Well I guess if that’s what you heard, that’s what I am.” I threw in some chips. Not enough to make a decent profit, but it was early days yet.

“You look like one.”

I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. Dankdirt threw in slightly more chips. Ah _ha._ “Nothing for me to worry about here, is there fellas?” I asked.

The second man shrugged. “Naw,” he grumbled, setting down his own chips. “We is god fearin’ folk but we know when there’s a demon to be cast out. Reverend’s sent for exorcists and folk doctors afore.”

More con artists in the area, eh? Well, you learnt something new every day. I kept quiet, playing my hands stealthily and trying to slip the Queen I had in my jacket sleeve into play. Something at the back of my head kept telling me to wait, no matter how eagerly I wanted to be done with it. I listened to it. Sometimes, shockingly, I do listen to my conscience. It would be too obvious to do it now, anyway. They were still too alert. Best keep them talking. “Exorcists, huh?” I muttered. “Don’t do much of that work myself.”

“Neither does the other guy, since the fire.” More chips. Mr Chip-Happy paused to take a slog of whatever murky drink he was injesting. He squinted at me over the rim of his cup. “Heard tell it was demons.”

I raised my brow. Interesting, but not enough for small conversation. Poor fuck probably got into trouble with some un-detonated explosives. Happened to the best of us. Old buildings and unsteady foundations were an occupational hazard- as were, as it happened, sticks of TNT. It’s a fucked up life, sometimes. But I had to adhere to the crowd. “Maybe,” I agreed, finally getting the go ahead from my conscience to _place the fuckin’ card_ , “Demons get pretty pissed if you mess with one of their own.”

Seeing as the ‘demons’ I encountered were often just warbled cassette tape commentary and a few loud knocks from Armin on the floor above, I was in no way an expert. But they weren’t to know that.

“You seen one, then?” Dankdirt asked.

_Ah, the stage was set._ I cleared my throat, tried my best to straighten my spine, and began. “I’ve seen several. I barely escaped with my life from the last.” I paused to survey my audience, captive on my words, before continuing. “It’s always the same one. You see, demons come in pairs, and once I’d banished the first, the second kept coming after me, to wreak vengeance on its tortured brother.” Jaws were dropping. Chip-Happy put down more. I smirked at their attentiveness, glancing over to Armin’s seat. He was staring at me now, completely ignoring whatever drivel the girl was spouting at him. He was listening, I was sure of it. I knew, because he gave a small nod at my explanation. He’d told me the pairs story. If it made him happy that I spouted _his_ bullshit, then it made him happy. Wasn’t gonna argue with that.

“Beezlebub? Abaddon?” Chip-Happy blurted out. His friends shot him furious yet terrified looks. He shrank back in his chair.

I considered it. “I think he was called Clive.”

Their bog-eyed expressions, miraculously, didn’t change. Something in the back of my head wanted to laugh, but I held it in. And trust me, watching a bunch of guys who could probably knock you out with a single flick muttering the name ‘Clive’ in such fearful voices is a sight criminally funny. But I was good. I held out. I held out enough to knock one of my bad cards off the table and replace it with another Queen. Royal flush was on the horizon. “Is it still… o’ this earth?” Dankdirt phrased delicately.

I shrugged. “Guess so. Haven’t been able to cast him back yet, so-”

_That’s enough,_ something warned from the back of my head. Maybe I was pushing it. _Matter at hand, Eren, matter at hand._ Even that felt sluggish, like every move I was making was practiced and learnt- but not by me. The corners of my vision started to fade, curling into a kind of blackness that made me feel like drowning. My head felt like it was fucking _splitting,_ and then the ache came. _Oh, fuck no. Not this **again**_.

I flicked over my cards without feeling the urge to, darting my eyes up to view the shocked faces, and the voice curving out of me sounded too tempered by time to be mimicked. “ _Read ‘em an’ weep,”_ I growled.

That’s when it became a bit of a blur.

When I came to I had a gun in each hand and Armin threatening me with another. His gaze was stony, expression undeniably rattled, but I was the one who was shaking. My head was still pounding, the pain searing through my skull like a pickaxe driving into the bone, but I was upright. And armed, apparently. I wasn’t even sure where I’d gotten the guns in my hands; they were more like old fashioned pistols than the automatics I was used to. What I was really interested in was that smoke was curling out of one of the barrels, and one of my poker mates had dived for cover. There was a stream of amber liquid pouring from a whisky bottle at the back of the bar where the musket ball had found its target, and I winced. Everyone in the bar was staring.

_Fuck. I’d fired. I’d **missed** , but I’d fired. _Thank god for me being a shit shot.

“Eren,” I heard Armin say, voice low and shaking under the weight of his uncertainty, “Put them down.”

I blinked. The fog, for the moment, cleared. “Oh, fuck, uh sure.” I threw them down on the table with a loud ‘ _clunk’_ that made the entire bar jump back a few paces. It made me jump too. “What?” I questioned them, but all I cared about was Armin lowering his gun. I didn’t like that thing being pointed at me, especially not when he was the one doing the pointing. I’d seen Armin shoot. He didn’t miss.

Thankfully, he lowered it with a barely concealed sigh of relief, and I felt my muscles relax too. Why had they been so tense? “He’s a demon,” Dankdirt swore, spittle flying from his mouth like a bulldog with distemper. “Get ‘im out of here.”

I frowned. “No, I’m not.”

“Eren, now is not the time,” Armin hissed in my ear. I would have argued, but the way the men were glaring was enough to put me off starting a healthy debate with them. With Armin clutching onto my arm so tight I lost feeling in it, we left. If the enraged stares from the locals weren’t enough, the warning shot the barman decided to fire into the floor definitely got us bolting. And ducking for cover, once another misfire sent a bullet ricocheting off the doorway we escaped out of. Fuck, people in the South were salty as hell.

The so-called fresh air that hit us as we stumbled out of the bar tasted like grit and long-lasting heat, and I choked as Armin gave me another powerful yank towards where my pride and joy, a battered old Ford Mustang, was parked. Abandoned was a better word for it, but I was always shit at parking. Another shot landed in the dirt next to my feet, and I leapt forwards with a squawk. Armin didn’t even look round, just pulled me forward again as he ran. He wrenched the door of the Mustang open and shoved me into the passenger seat, slamming the door without checking all my limbs were in the car (they were) and diving over the hood to avoid another gunshot. Show off. I folded my arms and sulked as he leapt into the driver’s seat and stuck my keys in the ignition. The Mustang’s engine choked into a dull roar as he slammed a foot onto the gas, and we were wheeling out of harm’s way. The wheels skidded a little on the dusty track, but Armin was persistent. Come to think of it, I had no fucking idea how he’d gotten the keys. I kept them in my back pocket. Flirt.

“I didn’t get the poker pot,” I complained, slinking down in my seat.

“Can’t you think of something else other than money for once?” Armin hissed. “You nearly lost your head.”

“But the money, Armin.”

He took a hand off the wheel to give me a whack. Suppose I deserved it.  “You’re a fucking idiot!” he shouted, smacking me again. “What did you think you were playing at? You _said_ you had it under control!”

“I thought I did!” I defended, tightening my arms as the headache bounced around my skull like a pinball. God, my brain really had it in for me today.

“That didn’t look like _control_ , Eren!”

I groaned and sunk down lower, yanking at my own hair in an attempt to distract myself from the battle going on inside my head. My rational side was talking to my migraine. The other guy wasn’t taking it too kindly, if the sharp pains in the side of my skull were anything to go by. _Fuck, this hurts_. I gave up trying to yank the pain out of me and just started glaring out of the window. The world rushed past us in a dusty brown blur, the ground turning to dust under the Mustang’s heels.

It was then that I realised something else.

“Armin, you don’t know how to drive,” I pointed out.

The hands on the wheel flexed. “Didn’t think it through,” he admitted, flooring it through the intersection like a wild man. A cacophony of horns and squealing tires accompanied us for the next few seconds. “Drove a bumper car once. Practically the same thing.”

I reached down and shifted the stick into a higher gear to stop the whine of complaint coming from the engine. “It’s really not, sweetheart.”

“Don’t you sweetheart me, you asshole.”

I huffed. That usually _always_ worked. He must have been pissed. I let my eyes trace the tense figure he cut behind the wheel, muscles in his forearms strong as rope despite his lithe figure. The runes sketched on his skin seemed to dance and move as he spun the wheel. Everything about Armin reminded me of a fresh breeze, from that stupid little ponytail of his to the way his legs twitched when the Mustang’s progress became a little wobbly. Damn. Why it’d taken two years for me to realise I was onto a good thing was beyond me. If I wasn’t worried about being spun to my death, I would’ve kissed him right then. If he’d let me, which was a big fucking ‘if’. The gun he’d pulled on me was resting between us on the dash like a sleeping snake, ready to strike should the need take it, and I couldn’t help the way my eyes landed on it with a hint of suspicion. I curled my lip. “When did you start carrying a fucking gun?” I asked.

Armin didn’t reply; the look he cast me for a brief second was enough answer. Ah. He’d started carrying the gun since my migraines. Of fucking course. I gnawed on my lip and stared up at the Mustang’s roof, trying to calm my traitorous heart. It beat like a drum against my ribs, threatening to puncture my parchment skin, and the ache of forgotten money was suddenly the least of my worries. I let my eyes slide shut and wheezed out a breath as I changed the gears up for Armin. I was the mad dog let off its leash. Did that make Armin my handler? Probably. He’d like that.

“Where did I get the pistols from?” I asked, wincing for impact.

“I didn’t see you grab them,” Armin replied. His voice was still curt. “There could’ve been some hanging from the bar. You could have grabbed them from where you were sat.” He shrugged. “Must’ve been a trick of the light.” He gave the wheel another spin and almost drove us into a ditch with his enthusiasm, but with a curse in Norwegian, he righted us again. I ended up a tangle of limbs against the Mustang’s door, aches from old bruises coming back to haunt me (heh) and I gave him the best pleading look I could muster. “Sweetheart, pull over. Let me drive.”

Armin’s grip on the wheel tightened. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “Why should I let you drive?”

“Cus I might just get us to the hotel without killing us.”

Armin suddenly found the brake. I nearly flew through the windshield as the Mustang screeched to a halt, the dust cloud rising in its wake almost eclipsing the road ahead. Instead, my chest slammed into the dashboard and knocked the dusty, rancid air out of me. As I got my breath back and tried to gabble at Armin about road safety, he got out of the car and opened up the trunk. Still wheezing, I craned my head back to see him rooting around in one of his many bags, muttering something in that same language. A moment later, he was back, pulling my door open and thrusting something into my face. “Wear it,” he demanded.

I raised a brow. “Bit kinky, but I think I’m up for tha-” Then I realised what it was. Armin had taught me enough Nordic runes for me to know what ‘Elhaz’ meant. I especially recognised it when carved into the palest wood found around Scandinavia. I let out a snarl and batted it away. “I’m not wearing that fucking thing, Armin, for fuck’s sake.”

“Please, Eren.” Armin’s face wasn’t stern anymore. He looked… sad, almost. “For me?”

I wanted to hiss at it. I would have, if it weren’t for the hurt that crossed Armin’s face at my disgust. “Armin,” I said, managing to keep the distaste from my mouth with a stroke of luck, “I don’t think hinky dinky protection amulets are gonna help.”

He flinched like I’d slapped him. _Oh shit, now I **really** felt like the asshole. _“You know what I think,” he said, an edge to his voice as he let the rune slip from his fingers. “You’re just scared in case I’m right.”

To make him happy, I caught it in my palm. “Sure, whatever.”

“I don’t care if you don’t think the rune helps. I think it does.” Armin folded his arms as he glared down at me, like I was a naughty child. “I’m not giving you the keys until you put it on.” 

“Armin-”

“Do it.”

I put the stupid thing on. It sat against my chest like a dead weight, bright and ridiculous against my dark silhouette, but Armin was happy. Well, he still wasn’t talking, but his posture relaxed. Happi _er_ , I should say. He was definitely still pissed- but I low-key deserved it. We switched seats, I put the Mustang in a suitable gear as opposed to the breakneck speed Armin had been pitting it at, and we carried on driving. I pretended not to notice Armin reaching for the gun across the dash and kicking it under his seat. The danger, for him, had apparently passed.

I pulled into the hotel with as low a spirit as the Mustang’s fuel tank. Armin had been too busy ignoring me to really feel much, but bit by bit he was relaxing, pushing the events of the day to the back of his mind and letting them nestle there- evidence he’d no doubt try to pull on me later. He hauled our stuff out of the trunk before I got the chance to even take a step, and threw the room key to me as he bustled past me. My stomach dropped. He was doing a very good impression of someone nurturing a grudge. Shit.

The hotel was a nice enough place- I’d definitely stayed in worse. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it had a sunny demeanour about it that the tired motels on the side of the highways lacked. The people who worked there smiled, too. Most unusual, for a hotel. I never took much time to get to know a place- we’d move out sooner than later- but it was the first time we’d planned to stay for longer than just a night. People might start remembering us. Not necessarily a problem, but it got Armin twitchy and I liked him being comfortable. I opened the shiny red door to our room, every bit the child’s drawing of a room, and walked straight in. Armin didn’t want me to help. There was no point in offering.

I flopped down onto the double bed in the centre of the room with a groan. Home sweet not-so-home. I cracked an eye open when I heard Armin struggle, but only got chance to lift my head before he steamrollered in with our bags. He was puffing while he worked, but he did insist on bringing everything with us every time we left the room. Precautions, he called it. He probably had the right idea. Besides, the ‘equipment’ he had in his luggage was worth a fair bit to the right kind of thief. He set the bags holding these (his) down lovingly on the small table we had. He dropped mine onto the floor. From a height. I winced. “Come on, Armin, I didn’t mean to,” I mumbled.

He let out a sigh. “Eren, it wasn’t your fault.” He crossed the room to get to our en-suite: a luxury that, for once, we could afford. “I’m just annoyed at myself. We should have been more careful. Especially after last time.”

“Last time was two weeks ago.” I huffed out through my nose and trailed a hand through my hair. “I was getting so good. The pills were keeping them back.”

“Th’m?” Armin inquired, popping his head around the door. He had a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth that I couldn’t help grinning at.

“The migraines.” The look on his face made me groan again. “Armin, don’t fucking start.”

He disappeared to spit into the sink, but returned. “I just don’t think it’s anything medical.”

I sat up in order to shoot him the most unimpressed gaze I could muster. “No, you’re just suggesting that the fairies did it.”

Armin’s growl of frustration dredged up foam from the toothpaste. He vanished to finish cleaning his teeth as I flopped back onto the bed. Supernatural reasonings, my ass. I’d had the migraines since I could remember, and I always blacked out when they got bad. It was just something that happened. Doctors prescribed me drugs, they worked for a bit, they lost their power. Wash, rinse, repeat. I’d gone past looking for a cure for the damn things; so long as I could get on with my fake-job and hunt all the fake-ghosts, there wasn’t much point in worrying about it.

I might have dozed, as when I woke up I heard Armin padding around the hotel room like he was looking for something. I didn’t have the energy to lift my head. The rune around my neck felt like a boulder. “You’re an idiot, Eren. You do know that, don’t you?”

I shuffled lazily to the headboard of the bed at the sound of my name, grimacing at the way my neck twinged, and opened one eye a crack. Then they both snapped open. Well, when Armin Arlert’s stood at the bottom of your bed in nothing but a towel, it’s as good a wake up call as any. It was tied around his waist, low enough for me to catch sight of the way his hip bones dipped underneath the roughened material. He did it on purpose. He _had_ to. The runes he’d drawn on his arms hours earlier were still so stark against his skin, the far more permanent passengers across his chest and arms and… everywhere far paler. I struggled to sit up, and scooted over to the edge of the bed, placing my legs either side of his body as I gazed up at him through my mess of hair. “I’m an idiot,” I agreed, daring to reach out and run my hand up one of Armin’s towel-clad legs. I’d agree to anything he said. He was usually right. I heard him suck in a breath, but nothing more. “And a moron. And an asshole who runs his mouth before he thinks of who he offends. But… you’re still here.”

A hand descended on my head and began to play with the less tangled parts. It sent ripples down my spine and they collected in the pool of my stomach, nurturing a less innocent stirring as I leant into the touch. “I can’t abandon you,” Armin said, skimming his hand through my hair and drawing out a heavy sigh from my lungs. “You’re only an asshole 49 percent of the time.”

_Ouch, Armin._

A noncommittal grunt rose from my throat as I leant forward, nuzzling my face between his legs with a hitched whine as my reward. “You know I need you,” I mumbled, blushing at my own ridiculously romantic confession. I was pretty sure if I glanced up, Armin would have been blushing too. I nuzzled in closer, and felt something twitch beneath the towel. I grinned, turning my head to press a kiss to the spot. I got a mouthful of towel, but the harsh hum that came from Armin biting his lips around a moan was worth it. I pulled away to look up at him, flushed and still a little pissed at me, and gave a gruff clearing of my throat. “I’m sorry, you know. About what happened. You were… you were right, I guess. Maybe I wasn’t ready.”

It was all the admission Armin needed, apparently. He climbed into my lap inch by inch, laughing at the way I sucked in breath, and waited until he was flush against me before replying, “God, you’re ridiculous. You sulk so much when I’m annoyed with you.”

I snorted. Sad but true. I slipped a hand underneath the rough towel and pushed it steadily up his thigh, running my thumb over the skin that was marble compared to mine. I felt his muscles clench, his legs tighten their grip on me, and a broken little sigh that shot straight to my groin. “I just don’t like you mad at me,” I murmured, keeping my gaze on the hand that was pushing the towel up, exposing more and more of his pale leg, until I reached the curve of his hip bone. He let out a softer noise now, more private, and when I dipped my thumb into the groove of his hip, I even felt his body jolt. “I guess… I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Armin responded to everything I did, everything I dared do, and everything I promised. And once he pulled my shirt off me, leaving the rune bouncing against my chest, he gave me the sweetest sugar smirk imaginable.

“Well,” he said, untying the towel at his waist and finally letting it fall off his body onto the floor beside the bed, “I’m not mad anymore.” He shifted closer and pressed his arousal, hot and flushed, against my twitching stomach and arched a brow. “Am I?”

_Oh Jesus fucking Christ._

I have to add that yeah, Armin is good at shooting. Yeah, he is the cleverest person I know.

But, he can also blow my tiny shitty mind when we fuck.

And, uh, we fuck a _lot._

Trust me, Armin looks like the sweetest avenging angel, but looks can be deceiving.

A few minutes later he was riding me, sinking down onto my cock with willowy gasps and gripping my legs as he leaned himself back to get the perfect angle, nails sinking into the soft flesh and sending me dizzy with it. I vaguely wondered how many people in the hotel were able to hear us, but after Armin let out a particularly loud moan as he ground himself down into my lap, most coherent thought vanished to a nether realm.

“Ngh, fuck, Eren, agnnn,” Armin panted, throwing his head back and exposing the runes tucked into the base of his throat. The one hand I had grasping his hip tightened, the red marks clawing into his skin enough to make him drop down onto me harder, with a moan that knocked the breath out of me. He gave the thigh he was gripping a squeeze, and tightened himself around me as he rose up again. “Nn, Eren, g-gonna come, gotta… _hnnn_ … f-faster,” he hissed, spreading his legs around me and dropping faster, bouncing in my lap whilst all I could do was watch him and try to keep myself together. I was thrusting into him too, curling my toes against the bedsheets as I tried to hold back my own approaching finish, each thrust sending it closer, closer, closer…

“F-fuck,” I hissed, stroking my hand up Armin’s thigh and giving his ass a gentle slap as he writhed on my cock, “come for me sweetheart, come on, m’close too…”

Armin was beautiful, moving like that. His runes seemed like extensions of himself, moving and writhing along with his gasps and whines and pants, and for a split second, just before he jerked his hips up and came in slack-jawed silence, I swear I saw the fuckers _glow._ Then again, I had just had my mind blown out. Like an aftershock, I came a stuttering second after, Armin already flattened against my legs. Unfortunately, said legs gave way a second later, causing Armin to go flying backwards and nearly breaking my dick in the process.

When coherent thought returned, Armin was still sat on my dick, but had his glasses on and was tapping away on his slightly glitchy smartphone. Wasn’t the first time he’d used me as an armchair, but probably the first time post-sex. I groaned and ran a hand through my hair. “Where did you get your phone?”

“Your dick is remarkably flexible when it’s softening.”

“Piss off.”

Armin chuckled, but continued to scroll through something on the screen. It was his thoughtful face. I had no idea how a guy who’d just come as much as he had (especially when it was still cooling on my chest) was even capable of thought, but there were miracles I supposed. I gave his ass a weak slap and mumbled a, “wha’ isit?” until he finally showed me the screen. That falcon-esque girl was staring back from the contact picture. Well, if I hadn’t gone soft before, I definitely had now.

“Why you talkin’ to her for?” I asked, grimacing right back at the picture.

Armin turned it back around and continued to tap a response. “I’m tracking down our next job.”

“Ug.”

“Eren, don’t be dramatic.”

“Ugggg.”

He slowly moved off of me (with a lot of difficulty) and rolled off the bed, giving me a peck on the nose as he went with a smile. He slunk away to his laptop, no doubt set up on the desk during my previous snooze, but I didn’t follow him. I didn’t even have the energy to take the condom off. I must have looked a mess; close to passing out with Armin’s come all up my chest was, admittedly, a regular occurrence with me, but it still felt a little shit. My after-orgasm glow, the kind that lit up Armin’s runes like the fourth of July, was always snuffed out by my inescapable fatigue. Being tired was… well, tiring. I was convinced that it was the rune that was doing it to me, but then again, runes were runes. They were nothing but signs carved on wood. They didn’t mean anything, despite what Armin said. It was probably that placebo effect. Yeah, that’s what it was.

Once the feeling to my limbs came back, I disposed of the condom and staggered into the bathroom to clean up, flopping back onto the bed a moment later with a barely discernible grunt. Now was the time to sleep. God, I wanted the thing off.

“The reverend’s daughter was talking about a place East of here,” I heard Armin say, the click and clack of hands on a keyboard making me squint through my web of hair. “She went there with her friends, and heard tell of some stories. Apparently people have been reporting hauntings in one of the buildings there for quite some time. She seems to think the reports themselves are pretty recent, though- in the last thirty years or so.”

I couldn’t help the curious noise that thrummed from the back of my throat. So, Mr. Ghosty Ghost was either new to the gig, or had been dormant? I could smell the bullshit a mile away. “Sounds promising. Recent encounters mean it’s still on the public radar. Means more perks.”

Armin snorted. “It sounds _interesting,_ ” he corrected me. “After all, the ghosts you’ve ‘encountered’ have always been older than that. It’ll be fascinating if there really is a young ghost there- and even if there’s not, it’ll good to shake it up for the publicity.”

“That too.” I failed to hide my yawn. “Heard any more about it?”

“Mmm, not much from the records. I tapped into the town’s records and the police department, but didn’t come up with much joy. No record of violence there at all, actually. But then again, the archives from that age are a bit spotty. I could look more up once we do a sweep of the place and maybe track down some witnesses.”

“So we’re going?” I sat up then, blowing my hair out of my eyes. Armin had his back to me as he typed, the runes down his back pulsing with a strange energy I couldn’t understand. Then again, I was drowsy. Was probably a trick of the light. Had to be.

“If you’re up for it,” he answered, looking over his shoulder to me. “I mean, I wouldn’t want you to have another episode. But we are starting to run out of money, and seeing as you handed over a hearty chunk of it to those friendly locals, I’d say we needed more.”

“Fine, fine, we’ll do it. We can check out tomorrow,” I muttered, letting my eyes trail over the curve of Armin’s spine as I started to drift.

I couldn’t help drifting, the sounds of Armin’s fingers on the keys lulling me into the strange sense of security I didn’t often have. For someone who didn’t really have a home to go back to at the end of it all, I felt at home a lot when I was with him. So I drifted, and Armin typed, and the world was normal again- just for a moment.

* * *

Armin didn’t sleep. It wasn’t that sleep disagreed with him; when he _did_ sleep, Armin would be out like a light and there was no one capable of waking him. His brain was just… more wired in than other people’s. He couldn’t sleep because he was restless. He had bad dreams, dreams that made him wake up sweating and shaking, and he reached for me, of all people.

I thought it was because I was the only one there, the convenience, but it soon became clear that it was far more than that. He would reach out to me, either physically or just shuffling towards me to curl closer to my heat, and the funny thing is that I would be awake. I would wake in a second, like an alarm was ringing in the back of my head, and I would draw him in close and kiss him and mumble pointless things in a language he didn’t know, but it was enough somehow. It relaxed him, stopped the shakes and slowed his heart, and when he kissed me in the dark it was the sweetest kisses, the ones he reserved for only those occasions where he really needed them. I could get high off of those kisses. I _have_ gotten high off of those kisses, wrapped up in Armin’s dissipating fear and urge for comfort. And even if I thought I didn’t help, I did.

For one, he didn’t scream in the night anymore.

We got out after nine, Armin getting up before me to pack away his things. He stowed the important camera equipment in an easy to reach bag for when we arrived at the place of interest. The girl at the desk looked sad to see us go- she clearly hadn’t been on the night shift and listened to us banging. Sweet girl. Clearly wanted me. Armin had to whack me around the head to stop teasing as we bundled our stuff into the Mustang and set off, hitting the main road at 70 where we could. Armin was doing his thing, tapping away on his phone to set up meetings and checking trespass laws, and I left him to it. We never talked about his dreams. There was no point. He never told me, so I never asked.

What I did notice, as we swept past a rest stop, was that the rune was no longer around my neck. I’d dressed in a daze, not worrying about how I looked or what I wore, but the rune was missing. The weight was gone, leaving nothing but a light relief that made my skin prickle with pleasant realisation. Armin must have taken it off without me knowing. It was good he had; I didn’t really want to be drowsy as fuck once we started talking to people.

We got into East Jinae a little past 12, and I was fucking starved. We stopped in the nearest café and had lunch whilst Armin began to talk me through the procedure. As per. “The place we’re looking for used to be a warehouse, some kind of mill where they stored grain,” Armin explained as we picked apart our slightly soggy excuse of a breakfast. Everything looked like it was swimming in fat. Uck. I missed proper food. “I don’t know what it is now, for some reason the archives won’t tell me, but it can’t be far from here.”

“Right,” I nodded, slurping down my coffee. Shit, even that tasted watered down. “So what’s the plan of action?”

“Well, we don’t really know what we’re letting ourselves in for yet,” Armin said, “so we’ll have to take this cautiously. No provocation, not until we know it’s safe.”

I groaned. “Provacation’s my _thing_ , Armin. It’s what I do, it makes for good watching!”

“Not the point. If there is something in there-”

“Which there fucking isn’t.”

“-we need to take it slow. Feel out the surroundings, get our bearings straight. Before we go rampaging in like a couple of clowns. We need to be prepared.”

“Alright, Scar, what else?”

Armin huffed and glanced over my shoulder. “We don’t know if the people in this area are happy hearing about ghosts, but maybe talking to a few of them would help.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure, listening to a bunch of whinos rabbiting on about the ghost of great aunt Tessie over manor farm is definitely going to help our ‘investigation’.”

“I don’t even know why I bother telling you the plan if you decide to do it your own way anyway.”

“Because you’re intelligent and I’m not. And I’ll complain until it’s important, and then I’ll listen to you.” I flashed him a smile, one that was quickly trodden into the earth by an unimpressed glower, before a voice interrupted our conversation.

“E-excuse me?”

I turned around- and threw my head back with the weight of my groan. “Seriously?” I said, causing a few patrons to stare at us. “You asked _her_ to come?”

Armin hit me with a rolled up newspaper he found on the table.

The reverend’s daughter looked at me like I was an alien. Could see her point, really; whilst she was dressed in the most conservative little blue dress I’ve ever seen, my jeans were ripped in numerous places and my eyeliner was more on point than she could ever hope to dream of. Shit happens. She wasn’t actually as bird-like as I thought she was on first meeting- maybe not a falcon, but definitely a finch. Her eyes darted from me to Armin, wide like a child’s but full of far less innocence, before she introduced herself. “Mina Carolina,” she said. “And, yes, Armin asked me to come.”

My returning noise sounded something like a bad tempered sloth. “Sit down then, I guess. Tell us about this so-called haunted house.”

She frowned at me. I had to admit, her frowns were endearing. Just a little bit. “S-sorry, I’m confused. I thought you _liked_ haunted places- that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To investigate them?”

“Eren has a complicated relationship with the supernatural,” Armin said before I got a look in. “He wants to document proof, not go looking for every random spook that people happen to think is roaming.”

That was our press statement, the thing we always told people who doubted my belief in the supernatural. I mean, they were right, but they didn’t need to know that. If they did, we’d be out of a job. I popped my lips and arched my spine so far it cracked, drawing a sour look from Armin in the process. “So, sugar, why don’t you start talking. Where is this house, or ex gambling den, or old prison, eh?”

She wasn’t keen on me. I could tell by the way she sat down and drew her dress around her like I was going to eat her alive. Good. I wasn’t keen on her. “W-well it’s not any of those,” she said, her face pinched like I was a bad smell under her nose.

I raised my brow and looked to Armin. “Used to be a mill, right?”

Mina’s eyes flicked to Armin. “H-how do you know that?”

“I have connections,” Armin replied, with a cordial smile I never had the patience for. “I have experience in looking into things like this.”

If ‘experience’ meant hacking into city’s databases and archives for intel then yeah, Armin was a pro. I finished my breakfast as Armin and Mina talked amongst themselves, Mina’s voice low and nervous as she continued to sweep her gaze over the patrons behind me. They wouldn’t be paying attention to us, I knew, but there was something that kept the girl on edge. Can’t be ashamed to admit, it piqued my curiosity. She was running through her own experience of the place, carefully leaving out names like eyewitnesses are custom to doing in case we go snooping around the ‘friends’ she claimed went with her. She didn’t want to be known as a crackpot who believed in ghosts, and if her friends didn’t ‘see’ anything…

“So you’re saying something pulled your hair?” Armin was asking, brows disappearing up into his hair as she nodded a bit too energetically at his suggestion.

“Y-yes, and it felt strong. Like it could pick me up and throw me if it wanted.” She was twisting the edges of the tablecloth around in her hands, a typical nervous move. I stayed quiet. “And it went really cold, like someone had dropped us in winter all of a sudden.”

“Did it pull your hair again?”

Mina paused, before nodding. “Yes, twice more. The last time when we left. Like it was warning me not to come back.” Her eyes darted around again. Shit, she was twitchy. Like a deer avoiding a hunter. Was there such a thing here, in good old East Jinae? “There’s something else,” she admitted, leaning closer into Armin so her words were eclipsed from anyone who happened to be listening. The prickle on my back couldn’t help but rise.

“What’s that?” Armin asked.

“There was another person who went in there like you,” she said.

I exhaled slowly. Ah, fuck. Some other spirit fucker had got here first. That dropped down our investigation’s value. Armin shared the same expression as me when we looked at one another. Double fuck. He hadn’t known either. “Who was this other person?” I asked.

Mina twitched now I had joined the conversation, and tucked her head into her chest as she replied. “W-well, I don’t know his name. Only he was local to here. He went down, and… nobody really sees him now. Said something happened to him there. I don’t know. I’ve not seen him. Those who have just keep their mouths shut. He’s very influential here. But, uh, since he got out of the place… he’s not been the same since.”

Sounded like another line, but I guess I’d humour her. At least if it was a line, it meant whatever snot had been in before us hadn’t got what they wanted. And that left us free to snag the prize: a guaranteed paranormal reaction and another bit of footage successfully sold. Almost too perfect.

“One thing I couldn’t find out,” Armin said, diverting my attention back to Mina, “was what it is now. Is it just a ruin, or is the site demolished? We only ever tend to do stable sites.”

“Oh, it’s still standing,” Mina said, like it was the stupidest question Armin could have chosen to ask. “I can show you, if you like.”

Armin’s smile became a little more eager. “That would be great, thank you.”

We all stood up as a unit, me shouldering the bags and the camera as we set out of the café. The patrons didn’t even bat their eyelids. Probably didn’t even need to blink, fuckin’ lizards. What did they care, if a pair of out of towners wanted to go poking around some abandoned site? It wasn’t their problem. _Yeah,_ I thought as I shut the door behind me, _they won’t be the ones getting paid $100 plus for sitting in an old dive for an evening._

What Mina led us to, however, wasn’t an old dive. It wasn’t abandoned, or derelict, or any of those things. In fact, it was still functioning. “Well,” Armin stated as we stopped in front of it, “this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I imagined this place.”

It was candyfloss pink. Pink. The pinkest pink you could possibly imagine… and then add more pink. And yellow. And maybe a hint of lilac. The walls were covered in it, the paint cracking a little from the years, but nonetheless still there. The stonework of the mill, or warehouse, or whatever it used to be was sealed over with something to make the surface smoother (all the better to paint it like a pastel circus threw up on it) and a boarded up window was the only potential hint that ‘something was afoot’. I glanced at Armin with a raised eyebrow. I couldn’t speak. If I spoke, I would have fucking laughed. Armin was trying his best, biting down on his quivering lip as he looked it over. I almost keeled over when I saw the sign above the door, and the ridiculously sickly sweet cartoon cow that accompanied it.

“It’s called ‘ _Mister Moo Moos_ ’?” I asked.

That was what did it.

Armin’s laughter burst out of him in a single rush, and I got caught up in the riptide. We were both laughing like idiots, clutching our chests and nearly dropping cameras in the process, whilst Mina just glared at us. “What is so funny?” she demanded.

“Issa fuckin’ _Mister Moo Moos_ ,” was all I could get out through my laughter. “H-holy shit…”

“W-what-” Armin tried to ask, but his laughter kept invading his speech under he was wheezing for breath. “W-what is… _fuck,_ Eren stop laughing… what is it e-exactly?”

Mina didn’t seem impressed. “Well, now it’s a milkshake place. It goes up two floors, and the rest of them were apartments until the… behaviour… stopped making them so valuable. I think. Dad was called out here once or twice, but he always felt repelled by some kind of energy.” She shot me a foul look. “They say someone _died_ in here, show some respect.”

“W-what did they do, get p-p-pasteurised to death?”

“EREN.”

“Aw, come on, she walked into that one!”

Mina huffed. “Look, if you don’t want to take the case, you don’t have to! I’m only here because Armin asked me to be.”

“ _Mister fuckin Moo Moos…_ ”

“Eren, please.”

I tried my best to shut up as Armin ran some damage control with a pissed off Mina, and then we were talking to the owner. A burly hunk of man by the name of Mike Zacharias, he quickly shut me up when he said that even he believed in Mina’s story. “It’s been happenin’ since before I got this place,” he said, leaning on the counter as he talked. “I bought it up because it was cheap and I didn’t believe in ghosts. Thought it was a bunch of bullcrap, but once I had this place for a month or so… kinda started to realise what people was sayin’.”

I had the camera rolling for this part, only a handheld thing that didn’t hold much memory so we could have a few ‘eyewitness accounts’ on our footage, but by the way the big guy was shivering, I had a strange sort of feeling that maybe something was going on here. Or maybe it was the milk fumes. I still can’t fucking get over that.

He told us that he’d been shutting up shop late one night, and as he turned to leave he saw a note scribbled on a pad behind the counter. ‘ _Get out while you can’,_ it had said, and in a handwriting he didn’t recognise. After that, whatever this thing was kept leaving him notes, on pads or sticky notes or even on the walls. He said that no matter how many times he covered it up, the message bled back through like invisible ink.

‘ _get out while you can’._

_‘GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN’._

Well, whoever it happened to be was a very aggressive property developer, if they wanted him out. A big guy like that shouldn’t have been so shaky about a few pieces of written warnings and tiny blasts of cold air. But eh, maybe he freaked out over Disney films, I wasn’t one to judge. I mean, c’mon, Bambi is sad as fuck. Maybe not hair-raisingly scary, but don’t talk to me about _Night on Cold Mountain_. Fuck Fantasia.

Anyway, we stuck around for a little while, went through the motions of mapping out the place and marking down parts where encounters were said to take place, and Armin worked the crowd. It turned out that after a bit of persuasion, a lot of people were coming forward with stories about strange goings-on here. Funny that. Wave a camera in front of someone’s face and everyone wants to be in on it.

We were soon getting stories from customers, ex-tenants of the apartments above, even a member of the police force, all coming forward with the same kinds of stories. Someone wrote something. Someone pulled my hair. Someone poked me in the chest. Chairs thrown, tables overturned, the whole shebang.

Once we were done with the ‘interviews’, we were exhausted. “Sounds like this place is more well-known for its haunting than we thought,” Armin admitted, looking back through the footage and editing out the more ridiculous claims (like someone being picked up and tickled on the bottom of her foot- keep your fantasies to yourself, love). “Could even be considered poltergeist activity, from what they were all saying.”

“Or mass hysteria,” I pointed out. “Come on, think about it. One person punches in a claim, three more follow. Then another three. Then another ten. Then who knows how many after that.” I ran a hand through my hair, snagging my fingers on the knotted parts. “If someone’s told to expect something, they go into that situation looking for it. That’s the problem with these investigations: we need to know what we’re ‘dealing with’,” my inverted commas made Armin’s nose wrinkle, “but then we go into these places already wired to see something.”

Armin sighed. “It’s because we have to be careful. And I think there might actually be something in here this time.”

“I know. And you know I can’t agree with you.” I sank back into my chair, crossing my hands behind my head. “Just my two cents.”

Armin huffed, and continued to look at the footage. I scooted closer, bumping him with my hip, and his thoughtful frown morphed into a smile as I nuzzled against the curve of his neck. “Ereeeeen,” he whined, wriggling under my attention, “Mina’s gonna be back in a minute with the keys.”

“Mmm I know, I just want…” I inhaled the scent of fresh linen and chamomile and smiled. “I just want you to know that just because I don’t believe in this shit doesn’t mean I don’t believe in _you_.” Armin’s breath stopped rising quite so regularly. “I mean… I trust you. To get me out of shit. And I hope you trust me too.” I planted a small kiss, barely a whisper of one, onto the curve of Armin’s jaw and pulled away. He didn’t like contact with his neck- just one of his quirks- but he didn’t mind his jaw. That he could handle.

“I trust you,” Armin mumbled back, returning my kiss with one on my cheek, “but not with ghosts.”

I smirked. “Well, I guess you got good reason. If they do exist, _I_ exist to piss ‘em off.”

Armin sighed, and that seemed the end of our conversation.

* * *

Night fell quickly in East Jinae. Maybe it was the hoard of interviews, maybe the fact that we’d been plied with milkshake after milkshake until I couldn’t look at that fucking cartoon cow without wanting to throw up, but it came like a bugle call over the horizon. Mina handed us the keys from Mike with a grave look, one I would have mocked if Armin’s fist hadn’t been so close to my crotch, and said goodbye. She scuttled away pretty quick, too. Good riddance.

We were setting up our static cameras and switching them to night vision before the sun went down, checking our marked spots and making sure that it was stable ground. We had four set up in all; two in the main room, one upstairs, and one down in the basement. Yeah, this cheery, sickly sweet little thing had a basement. It was where all the milk was stored, but the décor hadn’t gotten far enough down to eclipse the room of its animosity. The darkness glared at us like a lion behind a cage, and I completely understood why Armin became on edge as he set up the camera down there.

We’d brought a few gadgets and gizmos recommended to us by other investigators, but my favourite was easily the EVP recorder. Armin explained it as entities using electromagnetic waves to communicate through the device, but I know better. Simply put, EVP recorders were the easiest thing to screw around with. And screw around with them I did. In the mix of white noise and trying my best at ventriloquism (which usually meant Armin holding the recorder whilst I turned my face away) we got the desired effect. A scratchy little voice on the recording that sounded like it could be saying ‘help me’. Awesome. Act surprised, _wah oh my god did you hear that?_ , get excited, move on. The art of the con is the execution, and we had more than enough experience with _that._

After an hour or so, even Armin was getting a little bored. The place was dead. You could have heard a pin drop on the pink and white chequered floor, but nothing. No noises, no creaks as the building settled, _nothing._ We weren’t going to get our money. We were slumped in one of the booths, thinking about our next move, when it hit me. I shifted my handheld camera up to my face and turned to Armin. “Want me to start askin ‘em things? I’ll be polite.”

Even my night vision camera caught the way Armin frowned at me. “I dunno, I mean it’s still early on in the ni-” And then he went rigid.

I blinked. “Armin?”

His eyes were widening slowly, mouth dropping open as he listened to something I couldn’t hear. I reached out to take his hand- and it was ice cold. “What the fuck?” I swore, almost dropping my camera as the breath that started coiling out of Armin’s mouth became visible. In the middle of summer. _Fuck._ “A-Armin, what’s going on, calm down,” I said, even though I was starting to feel it too. That temperature drop. It was like someone had turned on the AC. I wanted to go look for an air vent, check if it had come on without warning, but I didn’t want to leave Armin. He still wasn’t talking. He was still looking like he was _listening._ This was not funny. This was not funny at _all_ anymore. “Armin!” I hissed, tugging at his jacket. “Armin, come _on_ , what is wrong with yo-”

“I can hear something.” Armin’s voice was faint, like he wasn’t really sat in the booth with me. “I can… I can actually _hear_ something, I haven’t heard _anything_ in so long…”

“What?!” I jumped to my feet, looking wildly around me like there something was going to lunge out of the darkness. _Calm the fuck down. Armin may be in character. He might be faking. You know he’s a good actor. Roll with it._ “A-Armin what does it sound like, what is it saying?” I asked. My mouth was dry. I didn’t feel like pretending anymore. Something definitely wasn’t right, and it was not a good feeling. But I had to keep going. Had to pretend. _Think of the money think of the money think of the-_

“They don’t want us here.”

My neck almost snapped with how quickly I spun around. Armin wasn’t blinking. He was so still, stood like a marble statue in the limited light we had, and he _wasn’t fucking blinking._ “W-wha-?”

“They don’t want us here… because…” Armin’s eyes almost rolled into the back of his head as he tried to hold on, tried to chase this voice I couldn’t get a head start on, and I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Jamming my hand into the strap of the camera to stop myself from dropping it, I whirled into the darkness, and shouted, “Alright then! If you are fucking real, come and talk to me!” I spun on my heel, shouting the command over and over to an empty fucking room. As I spun I watched, taking in the kaleidoscope of Armin, the blinking lights of our static cameras and the occasional flash from the street outside, and then I _really_ lost my fucking temper.

“COME AND TALK TO ME, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. STOP FUCKING WITH ARMIN’S HEAD AND TALK TO _ME_. MAKE A NOISE IF YOU UNDERSTAND ME.”

I didn’t even have to wait a second, like I usually did when Armin threw something in the opposite direction.

A knock.

_Shit._

“F-FUCKING LIAR! LIAR, DO IT AGAIN. DO IT AGAIN, YOU GHOSTY LITTLE PRICK.”

Another, louder knock.

If the hairs on the back of my arms hadn’t been standing at attention before, they definitely were now.

This could not be happening.

I muttered curses under my breath to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest, turning first one way and then the other to decode where the fuck that sound had come from. Then I turned to Armin.

He didn’t look quite so pale now, just confused. His eyes were no longer rolling, his face twisted into a frown as he looked at the blank space around him, before he muttered, “What do you mean, ‘he’s the prick, not me’?”

And then, the rock moved.

And that was when I was pretty sure I was fucked.


End file.
